Daily Posts. Colorful Ideas & Inspirations.

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It's that time of year again where we look back on the colors that helped us define a year and look forward to the new colors that will help us paint a beautiful future. We had nearly 1,000 people create their own personal Color of the Year in 2011 and below we'll look at what trends emerged.

Now that we've done this for two years it's interesting to see the change in colors and the words we use to describe our year. As can be expected, love was the most popular word used to describe your colors. And the top 4 words our community chose for 2011 "Love, Hope, Happy, Fun" were almost the same as last year's "Love, Happy, New Hope." Reds have been the most popular color both years, but 2011's colors are more cooler with more blue, teal, and purple shades.

As always we want to know what you see as the color of the year. We each see the world uniquely and we're here to help you share that wonderful perspective of yours. You can help us shape next year's graphic by naming your own Color of the Year for 2012: www.ColorOfTheYear.com

Nearly 1,000 people from around the world told us their colors of the year for 2011... Here are the people's colors of the year:(Click for Full Screen View)

This week we are re-featuring the pattern template contest we initially posted last Friday. The challenge is to create a numbered pattern using any number one through seven (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7) with the month of April in mind (see more on the theme, below). Also, each number must be its own pattern template.

Createmixedmedia.com features an artist each week on their homepage in "THE WEEK AS ART" as visualized by the artist who creates that weeks days as art. This week on createmixedmedia.com there is a wonderful display of numbered art four through ten (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10) each very rich in color by artist, Denise Brown (inkstitch.net).

Create Mixed Media will place each winning COLOURlovers template as a colored version by the creator, on their site the first week of April in THE WEEK AS ART. The image on the site will link back over to the winners pattern on COLOURlovers.com.

Seven Winners - You win exposure and a great prize!

This fun opportunity offers you as a creator, exposure on your design skill and a prize of $25 to spend in the North Light Shop which has tons of books on mixed media, color, anything art, craft, hobby and technique.

The challenge rules:

Template must be created using any single number one through seven (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7).

You can submit as many versions and numbered templates as you like.

Please submit a colored version along with your original grayscale template.

A loose theme of "April Fools" and/or "April Showers" will give you more weight in winning, but you are not limited to this directly (i.e. in the current weeks artist on createmixedmedia.com, her work is simply colorful and organic which will work too).

You can use any extra design elements (shapes, lines, etc) you would like within the template, but the number does need to be noticeable.

I'm sure everyone knows that having an impressive resume can sometimes be the deciding factor in whether or not you land a spot at your favorite company. With so many resumes hitting employers desks these days, the first step is to get your seen by the right people to give you that fighting chance.

It goes without saying that some employers might not jump at the chance of having a resume sitting on their desk in the form of a milk carton, but the up side to such a resume is that you are sure to get noticed.

It doesn't take drastic actions such as that to impress your new potential employee, but creating a clean, well-designed, and easy-to-read resume might be all it takes to get them to notice you and consider you a candidate.

With so many people on the hunt for a job these days, adding a bit of personality often times give your potential employers enough reality about who you are. And if they like what they see, you could jump ahead to round to.

Just like with business cards, your first impression has to be something worth looking at. I have always been a fan of the sewn business card, but this resume with a sewn detail on some awesome fabric is another cool way to stand out and show off your personality a little more.

Of course, landing a job really comes down to the right fit for you and the company, and a resume isn't 100% going to be the deciding factor, but presenting a well-prepared and unique resume gives you the best fighting chance at getting your body of work seen by the people who could be your future employers. Giving them something something to talk about and something that they don't see dozens of times in a given day will at least come as a breathe of fresh air and something they will definitely remember.

Comic Sans is installed more on PCs. Why so serious Linux & Mac? That's just one of the many things we discovered while looking into the creative history of typography aka fonts. They play a huge part in branding and logos. They bring us the words in the stories we read. They add personality to a message. ... and with CreativeMarket.com, our new marketplace for beautiful design content like fonts launching soon, we wanted to bring the typographic history, usage & character to life. Get your typographic love on!

Color is infused into every aspect of our lives, especially those in our color bubble, so we thought it was time to devote a big Valentine to Color itself! Although we couldn’t include all the colors in the rainbow, here are some colors that really touch our hearts on Valentine’s Day.

First up, why don't you tell the community a bit about who you are, what you do, how long you have been doing it.

I'm the Creative Director at Zaarly, a place that's bringing business back to neighborhoods again, because life is better when you talk face to face, when you're not just a number. I've been drinking this kool aid for a little less than a year. Before that I owned Squared Eye for about 4 years. Before that I worked at a thrift store.

With the launch of our design content marketplace, CreativeMarket.com coming soon we thought it would be fun to take a look at the most popular design elements in movie posters from 2011. After all, it's the carefully & creatively designed marketing materials for the movies are what get us to the theater.
(honestly, the best selling designs at the movie theater these days are the concessions stands... $6 for a bottle of water?!) The designers capture our attention, but the real success of a blockbuster movie will be determined by the quality of the film itself (not including #4 on the list below)... Let's take a look.

We bring you a great interview with Jason Allen, of Haft2.com, an intriguing firm that focuses on, yeah, you guessed it, color! The focal point today is to showcase their 2012 Haft2COLOUR Calendar Project, and absolutely amazing piece of quality!

It's not too late for 2012 calendar printing projects, visit Next Day Flyers for good prices and fast turnaround.

I was highly impressed with the presentation of the calendar. It was delivered in a nice silver tin with a branded paper wrap and a wonderful opening letter about the project and the Haft2 mission - I felt like I had just received a very nice gift!

Haft2 is giving away three calendars to some lucky winners on a fun challenge (see bottom of post). I would like to add that I just so happened to come across this project originally from the comments on our previous post about 2012 Calendar Print Trends. I just had to know more about it, see the real deal and get to know what Haft2 and Jason were all about. I'm sure glad I did.

First up, why don't you tell the community a bit about who you are, what you do, how long you have been doing it.

I'm Zach Holman. I'm actually a developer, although mostly I just like working on all aspects of making a product. I do a lot of writing and screencasts at zachholman.com, and like to give talks at conferences until they all slowly realize that I may just be insane.

I'm currently employed by GitHub here in sunny San Francisco. Okay, so maybe it's not always sunny. It's the thought that counts.

Some people are tough to shop for, but not to worry because the COLOURlovers gift guide has a little something for everyone. This guide is full of colorful ideas from our favorite stores as well as some wonderful DIY projects that are so darn easy to do for that person that deserves something special. Check out the gifts below, and if you want even more ideas, make sure to check out our curated Gift Guide on Pinterest. We have lots of goodies over there too. So here we go!

For The Cooks: For that aspring chef in your life here are a few things that will brighten up their kitchen and spirits as they spend their days making magic in the kitchen. The bowls are perfect for serving and a hand-held blender is great for the friend that makes mashed potatoes or protein shakes and doesn't want the hassle of all the clean up. If you want to go the extra mile, consider getting a recipe book and filling it with your favorite family recipes and collect favorite recipes from family and friends. These gifts are sure to be a hit for that lovely cook.